For the 'Thirty Years War' read...

 ..the book by John Bowyer Bell's "The Secret Army" allowing for his sympathetic Yankee ,"Our house in America is much bigger than your Vice-Regal Lodge..." approach. His book is shot through with hyperbole and wild, pathological exaggerations of IRA effectiveness and strength in numbers.

His sources were Ruairi O Bradaigh of Republican Sinn Fein not Pat Doherty or any of the Provisionals. They suffered hunger and dirt sooner than tell their story to "a CIA man"(Martin Donnelly). The Provisionals were uncompromising Irish Republicans with socialist leanings in the 1980's. The RSFers were more pliable and Bowyer Bell greatly exaggerated their role with the aim of gaining more 'inside' information and 'good' stories since stories were all that he wrote. He was primarily a features writer and journalist anxious for an 'exclusive' or 'sneak preview' of what the IRA was planning.

His leads went dead after September 1983 because that is when Michael Mc Manus hung up his M1 carbine. When that happened, Continuity/ RUC/ Informers Central in the Knocks country near Lisnaskea,Co. Fermanagh went dead and Ruairi O Bradaigh got no more money for having his former playmates killed.

Note. Bowyer Bell's trail went completely dry in 1995-he called the 'game' off and lifted the ball and walked off the field of play. Sadly,for Bill Clinton,I had called for a bogus ceasefire in August 1988 (eine falsche Waffenstillstand) and once again pulled a rabbit out of the hat in 1995 with three surprise attack,the first against Prudential Assurance in Manchester... as I had juggled three oranges in my hands for three Italian female guests,three weeks before I handed over the documents relating to the British Operations Handbook to Jim Wray of Derry,Pat Doherty's nominee in August 1988.

Once again,I proved to be a "dashing young blade of ninety summers". (Der Spielplan of 1988,"What is to be Done-The Sequel"). 

One of Bowyer Bell's main facilitators was Catherine O Donovan. The other who identified IRA agents for that thinking man's writer and the British Secret Service and the Gardai was Michael O Riordain,an indefatigable meddler and glorified thug and hooligan,even the witless Dr. Noel Browne realise that simple fact.

Dr Noel Browne? Michael O Riordain?

Two rebels without any enduring legacy. No one knows that fact better than the people who associated with them and the Irish Labour Party. Ruairi Quinn "respected Mick but wasn't afraid of him"(Albert Mc Creadie). Only a naif would take Communists or Communism in Western Europe seriously.... but there's one born every minute.